Remaking
by Kuroi-cho-tsuki-shiro
Summary: In the aftermath, they find each other. Hisana x Byakuya 53
1. Chapter 1

_**Author's Note: **_

_**Story so far: Hisana went to the human world to find Byakuya after he went missing in action. She found him, but while the other **_**shinigami **_**fought, he was forced to use Hisana's **_**reiatsu **_**to supplement his own and defeat a hollow, hurting her in the process and draining her soul. Though she has recovered well and returned home, he has remained for treatment at the Squad Four barracks.**_

_**And the story continues…..**_

She ran across the night-time garden, not caring that the gown she wore was too thin to protect her from the freezing air or that she was barefoot and the snow, painful after just two steps. She nearly lost her footing several times. Then came to a halt, panting, on a miniature bridge that crossed the lake where it was narrowest. On the far side of the water, beneath the weeping willow where they had always sat to write, Byakuya was kneeling.

He looked up and, seeing her, rose, slipping his _haori _off as he did so. He met her on the bridge and wrapped it around her shoulders.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

She had sensed him. The moment he had entered the garden, she had known. It had woken her from a deep sleep. Perhaps, even in her dreams, she had been waiting for him. Two weeks since they'd been found in the real world. She had made a swift recovery, but Unohana had insisted Byakuya stay at the barracks until he was fully healed, and it had taken longer than she had imagined. She had not expected him to return in the middle of the night. Were it not for the cold, she might have thought this was a dream.

Without speaking, she stepped forward, pressing her cheek to his chest while still holding the _haori _around her shoulders. And, after a moment, he put his arms around her: "Hisana-_san." _Her name sounded like an incantation.

"Byakuya-_sama."_

He didn't answer. His embrace was lighter than it had been before. The first time she wanted, even needed his arms around her, he barely held her. "What's wrong, Byakuya-_sama?" _Again, no answer. She pushed back from him. He was looking out across the garden, across snow stained lavender by the moonlight. It seemed that he had forgotten she was even there: "Byakuya-_sama?"_

"Why did you come?" he said to the garden. It took her a moment to realise he was addressing her. "Why did you come to the human world?"

"To find you." His face was empty. "Byakuya-_sama."_

"I lost fourteen men. I should have been leading my squad and I – I" – He lurched forward. She had never heard his voice so raw and, though he had stumbled into her embrace, he didn't return it. She dug her fingers into his robe:

"Even Ukitake couldn't foresee what those hollows could do," she said.

"And that's why he had no right to bring you."

All at once, he had stepped away from her, his footfalls crossing the bridge before she had so much as turned, her hands outstretched to where he'd stood in her arms. Now, she pulled the _haori _tight about her shoulders and looked after him:

"Where are you going?"

"To bed."

"Byakuya-_sama" – _

"Do you realise," he asked, turning back: "That what you did saved the lives of nineteen men, myself and Ukitake?"

"Are you – angry?"

"I'm ashamed."

"But it was you!" she said, scampering after him: "You saved us! I didn't know what I was doing!"

"You should not have been there." He was striding towards the house and she followed, the movement forcing some warmth back into her frozen feet:

"Byakuya-_sama, _what are you saying?"

"I wish that you had not come."

"You would be dead!"

"So would the eighteen others. But you would not have been hurt. I wouldn't have been the one to" – His steps faltered. She had followed him onto the decking that ran along the side of the mansion and now, when he spoke, it was more to himself than her: "I am Kuchiki Byakuya, Captain of the Sixth Division of the _Gotei _Thirteen. And I would sacrifice my men for my own personal vanity." He slumped heavily against the door-frame.

"But you didn't. You didn't sacrifice them. You did what you had to."

"I nearly destroyed you!" he cried. She caught the anguish in his face before he dropped his head into his hands. This was not the man she knew; this was a tower with the foundations torn out; he was breaking apart before her very eyes. Even to touch him now felt like trying to catch water as it streamed between her fingers.

"But you didn't," she said desperately.

"I am either a terrible captain or a heartless man."

"You are neither of those things."

"What I did" –

"Byakuya-_sama." _She tried to steel her voice as she reached for his hand. Though he didn't return her grasp, she placed it at her waist, an action that caused him to turn towards her. "I'm here," she said: "Right now. And I'm not so fragile as you believe me to be." Tentatively, he put his other hand on her cheek. She let him draw her close. Then she reached up and pulled his head down until their lips met.

He didn't respond at once. Then, it seemed to her that the differences between them began to fracture and crumble. The heat of his body remained where all else fell away.

She had come to believe she needed him, but now she understood that his need for her was equal to, if not greater than her own.

When she pulled back, she caught a glimpse of his uncertainty. Confusion. He hid it quickly; his mouth a flat line; the lids fell over his grey eyes. But she had seen it. She smiled in the knowledge that she had surprised him, and his brows knitted a little as if he didn't quite understand the joke:

"Are you cold, Hisana-_san?" _She nodded. He took her hand and led her a few more yards down the length of the building, then pulled back the screen door to his quarters and let her in.

Like every other room in the mansion, his apartments were largely undecorated. There were books everywhere. There were papers and a writing desk. In one room, there was a shrine to his family. In another, a fire-pit, unlit for several weeks. She wandered after him through room after room, and the one thing that struck her was that there was no heart in this house. The room she had stayed in as a guest felt more lived in than his quarters and, eventually, she felt moved to ask:

"Why have you never furnished the house?"

He stopped and stared at her, then glanced around as if seeing the space for the first time:

"I live alone here. It would seem – indulgent."

"But you keep the garden looking so beautiful!"

"The garden lives, it grows, it changes." He stepped through into the bedroom and drew aside the door to a cupboard set in the wall: "Nothing in these walls lives or changes." He offered her a blanket: "To keep you warm. The _haori _doesn't suit you."

"No, it doesn't."

"Ukitake says he would take you in as a member of his squad. You aren't strong, he says, but you're resourceful. That was the word he chose: resourceful."

"What did you say to him?" She discarded the _haori _and wrapped the blanket round her shoulders. Byakuya came over and kissed her on the cheek:

"I told him to go to hell," he said. He teased her hair out from where it had become caught in the folds of the blanket: "Why don't you ever brush your hair?"

"Ukitake-_taichou _acted with the best intentions."

"You could wear it up. I've never seen you wear it up."

"It hardly seems relevant" – She lost her train of thought and shivered as he kissed her neck.

"It is most – relevant," he whispered in her ear. His lips traced the line of her collar bone and he slipped the blanket back from her shoulders, then pulled aside the kimono with the crook of his thumb.

She sunk into his kisses, her body responding to his every touch with involuntary tremors as he pushed her back onto silk sheets. This time, there was no hesitation in him and, for a time, it was as if the substance of her self meant nothing to him. Beyond the soul of a man who was, at times, so gentle, so careful, so enamoured with her, there was another who believed he had had a right to her from the very beginning. To this second, she gave herself willingly, discovering that, within him, there was little that was gentle.

She had wanted to be someone different; she had wanted to be braver, stronger. She had never realised that he could, in the anonymity of his desires, break apart that old self so completely and remake her.


	2. Chapter 2

They had not lit the fires. She could feel the winter chill on the bare skin of her back as she lay against his chest. The rest of her body was heavy though and languid, and she didn't have the energy even to turn and pull the covers up. She had just begun to drift away into a kind of timeless sleep when he said her name:

"Hisana."

"Hm?"

"Can I ask you something?" She shifted so that she could see his face. "Hisana, can you promise me that you will never go to the human world again? Not if you live for ten thousand years?" She stared at him:

"I only went there to find you."

"I know, but I will have to go back, and if something were to happen to me, I need to know that you will be here. Right here. Safe." His fingers traced the line of her spine. She thought that was a somewhat unfair tactic to coerce agreement.

"Would you leave me behind? You are selfish, Byakuya-_sama."_

"Yes," he said: "Entirely so."

"I hate _shinigami." _She thought she felt him chuckle as she inched up his body and placed a kiss on his lips: "I promise then. Even if I live for ten thousand years." She slid back down into the crook of his arm.


	3. Chapter 3

_**Author's Note: Sorry this chapter is a little late. I've been at a con in Paris! It was awesome! :D Um….. back to Hisana…..**_

That night, she dreamed of a garden full of the most vivid colours. She and Byakuya sat together on one side of a lake. On the other, there stood a girl. Her clothes were ragged, her hair unkempt. It was as if Hisana was staring at a mirror of herself as she had been years ago: a street child. But the girl was not her, as much as they looked alike. She was smaller than Hisana, lithe and well-muscled like a cat: the slenderness of an underfed body offset by an underlying strength. There was no softness in her features, but her eyes were sharp. Intelligent. And a bright blue that was nearly violet.

Hisana stood up from the grass and started to run down towards the water. Yet the moment she touched it, she woke.

Byakuya was standing in the doorway, looking back at her over his shoulder. He was already in uniform. It was the cold blast of air as he had opened the door which had woken her, along with the white winter light. She pulled the blankets up over her body, but the chill had already reached into her chest and she coughed. Eventually, she had to sit up to catch her breath. Byakuya was watching her impassively:

"Who's Rukia?" he said: "It's a name, isn't it? Is it a man or a woman?"

She looked up and saw just a hint of, what? Suspicion? Jealousy?

"I was dreaming, wasn't I?" He didn't answer: "She's a girl. I mean, she was a girl. A child. She died."

"Oh."

"She was my sister."

"In Rukongai?"

"In the real world and, for a time, in Rukongai."

His face had softened and he turned back into the room:

"You had a sister? You never mentioned her."

Hisana looked down. Her hands had tightened on the blankets:

"She was just a baby; it's not as if I knew her."

"Still, I didn't realise that you had lost your family."

"I haven't. I didn't. It wasn't like that. She wasn't like family. Not" – she hesitated. She had wanted to say 'not the way you say it.' Family had a meaning for him. It meant bloodline, tradition, respect: things that she had never associated with the screaming bundle of accusations that had followed her into the afterlife: "Not a real family."

"But she was your sister."

Hisana rolled out of bed and started dressing quickly. She didn't trust herself to reply. "For my own ancestors, I keep a shrine. It's important that no-one is forgotten," he said: "Whether you knew her well or not, she was your blood."

He frowned at her silence and, perhaps wisely, chose not to pursue the conversation further: "I won't be late. I simply have to turn in a report, but I'll let the servants know you're here. If there's anything you want….. And I'll speak to my grandfather tonight about you and I. He can be a little – traditional – in his attitudes." He waited, but she kept her head down, her hands busy with the sash at her waist: "I'll see you later, Hisana."

As soon as he was gone, she slumped down on the bed, her hands on her belly as if the pain was a physical one.

It had been so long since she had dreamed of Rukia. No, it had been so long since she had even thought of Rukia. For years, she had been hoping, wishing that she could forget, but now that she had found a way to put those memories aside, distracted by her own life with Byakuya, she felt like she'd betrayed her absent sister.

She stood up and left the bedroom, padding silently through his oddly soulless appartments. She had hoped that she might wake up this morning with the same sense of bliss she'd felt last night, but the dream had left a bitter taste in her mouth. She did not deserve the happiness Byakuya was offering her. And she had lied to him so deftly this morning.

There was a shrine in the anteroom. She stopped beside it. It looked as if each shelf was dedicated to a different generation of his family, their images placed with reverance amongst the candles and incense. She picked up the only picture she recognised, which was that of his father: the same grey eyes; the same expression of deep calm. But she wasn't looking at it. She was thinking of the girl on the other side of the lake, the one whose features had been so similar to her own:

"If you were alive, would I know?" she murmured.

"Kuchiki Sojun died about eighty years ago," said a voice from a few yards behind her. She almost jumped out of her skin, dropping the picture as she did so. A man stepped into the room, picked it up and returned it to the shelf. He straightened, smiling at her: "Shiba Kaien, Vice-captain of Thirteenth Division. Pleased to meet you." He gave a salute, putting two fingers to his brow: "Aren't you the girl I should be thanking for keeping my hide intact? Hisana, isn't it?"

"Er, yes."

He glanced around:

"I actually came looking for Kuchiki, but perhaps he's gone on ahead."

She pointed vaguely in the direction of the gates and he dropped his hands to his sides and gave a swift bow: "Thanks."

"Um, Shiba Kaien?" she said before he turned away.

"Yes?"

"Could you take a message from me to Byakuya?"

"Of course."

"Could you tell him that I'll be going to the library at the Fourth Squad barracks and that I'll return this evening?"

"Yes, of course." She stepped out onto the decking with him and drew the door shut behind her. The _shinigami, _Shiba, hesitated where a short flight of stairs led down to the lawn. He looked back at her: "And where will you, in fact, be going, my Lady?"

She froze. His gaze was not unkind, but it did not waver from hers as she met his eye. She had been taken in by a blustering façade. Were any of these people what they seemed to be? Feeling cold inside and mustering more courage that she thought she could, she told him:

"Inuzuri, in the Seventy-eighth district of Rukongai."

He nodded. Then grinned and saluted again as he trotted down the stairs:

"Have fun at the library. And stay safe, Lady Hisana!"

She really hated _shinigami._


	4. Chapter 4

**To everyone who has faved and watched this story. THANK YOU!**

**The next part of this story is called FAMILY and it will appear in a separate installment, which I will upload now. If you can't find it, look on my profile page. As soon as this website re-allows internal links I will make sure that it is easier to navigate from story to story. Sorry for the inconvenience.**

**THANKS TO Shadewolf7, Truantpony, ForbiddenME, Pinky357, Immortal Vows, Chellythemadhatter, Insomniatic95, Sallythedestroyerofworlds23, UNTensaZangetsu, XDark FangsX, Superlynx, Ichigoforeverlove, Ennaalemap, Makaykay15, Kaze05, Splash into Forever, War90, Yellowwomanonthebrink, Bakane, Night Flower, Hallmarktrinity, Tiffany Park, Snowcrystals, Neristhaed, Splitheart1120, VanillaTwilight4, Nightfur, Happykiller93, Haildance, Ani-mimi, Mysticalphoenix-avalon, Jennyrdr, Goranr, Firebirdever, Isleofsolitude, Itachipanda, Pamila de Castro, Lemgem, Nightingale Heartz, Ashes2ashes121, Icyangel27, Westhardobbs, Devdhftf, Computer-Rukia-Addicted, Thayet9, EcalSol019, WriteFF13, Sky1011 and Xwannaflyx.**


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